From firm amen to firmament, so be it, she
began the discourse known as partimen,
but do not think I shall be ladylike and see
with batty and forgiving eyes the truths you bend
to fabricate and lubricate dumbstruck women.
I was one, I know. The ground is pocked with hidey
holes of those who wish that life could be more tidy,
while secretly they hope you will happen again.

Touché! I thought you’d give me too much credit. Not enough is better—keeps me hungry, slightly mad and vengeful. Hidey holes are fine, but not a lot of fun once scars have healed. For you to think me bad is easier than to maintain a Galahad. I like my women small, pretending helplessness, but only so that I can put off happiness and float, a former prince, upon this lilypad.

You make me want to croak, said she. What happened to
the fearless knave, enchanting minds and broken hearts?
If not for you, I never would have wandered through
these catacombs to echoes of assembled starts
that went nowhere but could. I would have missed the arts
of time, of rhyme and pulse, the sciences of grace.
Tributes to you are heaped and crammed in every space,
while thieves are making off with who you were in carts.

Round Two

The poet from a slowly moving eddy watched the poetess and waited for the impulse that would stir to words that either remedied or botched. I know I have done both to you, knocked hard and flat the tenderness you offered. I’m a heartless brat, but for all that, we are together still. What yearned in you for me is gone; I see what I have burned. Why is it hot in here? Who turned the thermostat?

The poetess who always had too much to say
felt planks of certainty break loose and start to drift.
Get back here, you! A partimen, once started, may
not lie unfinished. Someone had to drag and lift
what constancy remained; she could not lose this gift
or him! To no one in particular, she said,
I don’t recall what ejected you from my bed.
My rhythm’s off. I can’t iamb. What is this shift?

The poet wept, but not so that his former love could see or know what kept them, while embodied, bound. Fleshless, boneless, he had nothing now left to prove. I’m here, he said, for what it’s worth. The hallowed ground you sought I could not be, and what I thought I found in you seemed easily replaceable. The chase was all I knew. Outrunning you became the race. They may find traces of us in some burial mound.

The Arbiter

She walks along the shore, a pocketful of spheres
and dreams that spin above her head in tubular
and spiral shapes. When beauty’s crushed, nothing adheres,
some plaintive voice is telling her in angular
profusions. What we two achieved was jugular
and cruel. Not so, she says. Your ballast holds me here
in this new place where sound precurses poetry
of dialogue from two to three, spectacular!

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7 thoughts on “Partimens are such sweet sorrow: the dialogues”

I am continually in awe of the tiny timeframes you repeatedly prove sufficient to produce masterful compositions! I’m sure many things will occur to me upon further reflection, yet in this moment what stands out is that you give this Arbiter an incredible example of what this work looks like when flawlessly executed.

Content and form, Creative, are words you’ll often hear paired in poetry observations, including opinions one way or the other on which matters more. It can get pretty Zen and then pretty silly, quick.

Poetry is a vase; I enjoy exploring the classic shapes and pouring variations of language, modern and obsolete, to see what the combination produces–and what the form is capable of containing. The arbiter has many of those same tendencies, imo,. 😉

“My rhythm’s off. I can’t iamb. What is this shift?” Elaine if your sense of humor gets any dryer I shall have to get out my gravity boots to hold me on when I read you. I like the way you so adeptly keep the persona of the poet visible, if ever so slightly, through out, something other poets can most appreciate. As usual your rhymes fade into near visibility allowing me to concentrate on the story being told. I will trust your meters are as sanitary, Your intrepid choices of old forms will certainly help keep them alive and in some cases create revivals. Again this one begs to begs to be heard aloud in the poet’s voice.

My attempts at the Spanish “copla” form of the octave (octavo) in English are far from perfect, though I’ll wear the privilege of doing my best–and hang the rest. Keeping forms in obscurity out of a sense of nationalistic or linguistic reverence strikes me as absurd. Once again, thank you for the kind remarks…we’ll see about the poet’s audio voice somewhere down the road.

Of course, the next poetic inspired project MUST be a Partimen. That fact was clear back when you wrote this one. I must say though, that fact was unbeknownst to me until brought into clear-without-a-doubt- focus this morning.

lol, Bridge, I had this image a few weeks ago that I was going to work to a Tweet-able size. Something about the poet being a chef who prepares a fine table for all her friends, who then arrive 45 minutes…7 months…18 years…3.5 centuries late. On their own time, in other words. This is exactly as it should be, of course. The poet-chef only needs to keep on cooking and laying on of the feast, b/c it’s inconceivable not to.

Twittered Truffles – a niche I have no doubt you could use to power an awakening of an entire world’s tongue. But the feasts, oh my WORD Elaine, that’s where my senses continue to be exquisitely nourished, expanded, even honed.

Know this, the vast range of linguistic delicacy you serve up here at Oceantics ensures many of us will be coming back for centuries!